Deadline has now revealed that a Hunted spinoff called Sam Hunter is in development, with the intention that it will air on Cinemax.

George is to return as agent Sam, now on the run from her former employer with a price on her head and a young daughter to protect. She will work as a freelance spy to discover who wants her dead, and how her predicament is connected to the murder of her own mother.

It is planned that Sam Hunter will be a four-hour miniseries, with Frank Spotnitz (The X Files) currently writing the script.

Spotnitz told Digital Spy last November that there were hopes for the series to continue, explaining: "We're going forward - it's sort of a spinoff of itself and it'll focus more squarely on the character of Sam Hunter. Hopefully it'll be on around this time next year."

He also revealed at the time that his initial plans for the second series of Hunted - which would have followed protagonist Sam to Berlin - had been abandoned in the wake of the BBC dropping out.

"It's going to change - that [Berlin plot] was when we still had the BBC as a partner," he explained. "Now it's one of those funny things where it's the same character, but it's a different series.

"As it happens, from the way episode eight [of series one] ends, it actually makes it quite organic to launch off into a different series, but it's not the direction we would've gone in had we stayed with the BBC."